Re: Binding

On Sun, Jan 05, 2003 at 03:31:36PM -0500, Champion, Mike wrote:
> What DOES have to do with the WSA are the tradeoffs between communicating by
> POSTing XML messages vs GETing URIs that do the same thing on the back end.
> You have made an awfully strong case that the GET strategy is massively
> superior, and I'd like to get those alleged advantages out for discussion.
> The ones I recall offhand are consistency with Web mechanisms such as
> bookmarks, consistency with the human-readable web (I could click on a link
> that invokes a read-only web service and displays the result), and
> consistency with the cacheing infrastructure (if a bazillion people GET the
> URI whose respresentation is cached at various places on the web, it doesn't
> cause a bazillion physical hits on the web server). 

Thanks.  Yes, those are some nice-to-haves.  But without any of those
I'd still opt for GET, for the big reason I mentioned.

> It would also be nice to compare these advantages with the downsides ...
> such as having to map any input parameters onto URIs subject to the URI
> encoding and length constraints.... and with the advantages of POSTin XML
> (e.g., leveraging the XML infrastructure, and the ease of mapping a "one
> size fits all" solution to procedural code, alternative transport protocols,
> etc). 

Sure, I'm all for fair comparisons.

In the past few messages, I've presented two or three different ways of
explaining the "low coordination cost" aspect of GET & URIs.  Surely
somebody reading this has thought "Well, ya, that does seem like a
pretty good way of retrieving data".  Please speak up!  BTW, Jon
Udell just posted this today;

"If you're creating a Web service that you hope will have a disruptive
impact, the lessons are clear. Support HTTP GET-style URLs. [...]"

 -- http://www.infoworld.com/articles/ap/xml/03/01/06/030106apapps.xml

I'm going to take the binding discussion off-list with Miles.  It's a
tad distracting, and just a nomenclature issue.

MB
-- 
Mark Baker.   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.        http://www.markbaker.ca
Web architecture consulting, technical reports, evaluation & analysis